In recent years, in circuit designing, designing is performed with multiple computer aided design (CAD) tools. For example, in circuit designing, a designer performs logical designing for performing logical designing of printed boards and implementation designing for performing designing of implementation of, for example, disposition of parts and interconnect between parts on a substrate. As a design support function for supporting such logical designing and implementation designing, a function of liking and running multiple CAD tools on a terminal device is provided. For example, such a design support function first runs, on the terminal device, a circuit design CAD tool that performs logical designing and an implementation design CAD tool that performs implementation designing. The designer then operates the implementation design CAD tool in accordance with the operation of the circuit design CAD tool. For example, when the designer selects one part in the circuit design CAD tool, the design support function selects that part also in the implementation design CAD tool. Accordingly, the above-described design support function enables a link and display of the result of operating the circuit design CAD tool and the result of operating the implementation design CAD tool on the terminal device. This, for example, allows the designer to perform a designing work while comparing by sight the result of operating the circuit design CAD tool and the result of operating the implementation design CAD tool.
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It may be, however, difficult to link multiple CAD tools and run them together by using the design support function. Because, in the implementation design CAD tool, the size of data to be used for circuit designing is large and the processing load is large due to high performance of printed boards and three-dimensional designing, it is preferable that a terminal device whose performance is high compared to the circuit design CAD tool. On the other hand, a designer who performs logical designing with the circuit design CAD tool may use a terminal device whose performance matches the circuit design CAD tool in order to reduce the costs. In that case, the performance of the terminal device used by the designer does not necessarily meet the performance sufficient to run the implementation design CAD tool. In that case, it may be difficult to link the circuit design CAD tool with the implementation design CAD tool and run them together by the design support function.
In recent years, design support services for supporting circuit designing by cloud computing have been provided. In a design support service, for example, an implementation design CAD tool is run on a high-performance server. The design support service accepts an operation by a designer from a terminal device via a network. The design support service then transmits image information generated on the server in accordance with the accepted operation and displays the image on the terminal device. In this manner, even when the performance of the terminal device is low, the design support service can provide the designer with a designing environment equivalent to that for executing the implementation design CAD tool on the terminal device.
When such a design support service is used, however, the circuit design CAD tool runs on a local terminal and the implementation design CAD tool runs on the server, which makes it difficult to link the tools and run them together.